Best fishing charters in Ft Lauderdale

Fishing Charters Ft Lauderdale Florida

Welcome to sunny Fort Lauderdale. Join Captain Lou, Taco and Jason for Fishing Charters in Ft Lauderdale Florida. We are local fishing guides who want to help get you find the best fishing charters available in our area for both inshore and offshore charters. We provide fort lauderdale fishing trips and fort lauderdale fishing reports to get you the best action available. With many years of experience as Florida fishing guides, we have met with and developed relationships that allows us to have inside knowledge the Fort Lauderdale fishing grounds, guides personalities, fishing techniques and boating experience. Local knowledge is a key to success when choosing your charter captain and we have it. Whether it is offshore Sport Fishing here in Fort Lauderdale or fishing the Intercoastal waterways for tarpon and snook. We have years of experience and fish day in and day out producing results with customer satisfaction in mind. We provide great charters for novice or experienced anglers, family, parties, friends and more.

Fort Lauderdale Sailfishing

Cool weather brings sailfish to Fort Lauderdale every winter. The bait running south to get away from the northern chill draw pods of sails that will swirl around great schools of shad, mackerel and other little fish until they form a tight ball. When that ball of bait fish gets tight and dense enough, a sail will light up to warn its buddies and then charge. The fish will use its bill to whack its prey. Half dead, stunned they spin a little as the sailfish swirls around to swallow every thing it hit. It swallows them whole, head first.

Once sails ball a school they seem to fall into a feeding trance in which they focus on nothing but striking until they are gorged with fish.

Skilled Fort Lauderdale charter boat captains and fishing guides know how to take advantage of sails balling the bait. When it happens, reels sing.

It is nothing to have two, three or even four on at the same time. Landing four at the same time on the other hand is a fully out-of-control circus.

The Gulf Stream is not far offshore in Fort Lauderdale. Sails are particularly interested in working prey in 150 or 200 feet on the edge of the northern current. But, they have been caught by guides trolling just outside of Port Everglades Inlet. Sailfish are also caught year around, but the most action, sailfish season, runs from late November into April.

That best time of year for sails is here again.

If you are coming to Fort Lauderdale, you have to go for sailfish.

Fort Lauderdale Swordfishing Charters

It is the time of year when you might expect to see big sword fish begin to make their appearance in the Gulf Stream off Florida’s southeast coast.

There was some evidence of that last week when two brother, Seth and Jordan Funt and friends, nailed a sword that measured a whopping ten feet in length and is estimated to have weighed 400 pounds.

Ed Killer, Scripps Treasure Coast Newspaper’s ace fishing and outdoor writer, told the story of catching this fish for the newspaper’s readers.

The brothers were fishing is some 1500 feet of water 15 miles offshore when the sword took a bonito strip. The fish came to the surface and then dived deep once again, peeling off the 65 pound test braided line.

Swordfish strike by slashing their bill against their prey. Once struck and killed or stunned the smaller fish is easily swallowed whole. However, it is not unusual for a swordfish attacking a bait to be hooked outside of its mouth because the slashing action may throw around the hook. That was the case in Palm Beach County where it took more than four hours to carefully bring the sword to the boat. Once it was caught the anglers discovered that the fish was hooked in its dorsal fin.

It is amazing that the hook didn’t come out during the battle and hats off to the anglers who kept the pressure on without over pumping, or giving the fish any slack, which could have allowed the hook to fall out. For part of this fight, an electric reel was used.

Killer reports that the record swordfish in Florida is 612 pounds, 12 ounces caught off Key Largo in May of 1978 by Stephen Stanford.A 683-pound swordfish was caught in the Gulf Stream 30 miles south of Marathon in April of 2012. That would have been a new record for Florida but it did not qualify because an electric reel was used to bring it in.

With the possibility of having 2000 feet or more of line out and a very strong fish on the other end, it is understandable that electric reels may be deployed.

South Florida Marlin Fishing:

What is an apex predator? It is an expression that is often applied to bill fish and of course major predators on land. Generally an apex predator in the Gulf Stream does not have reason to fear other predators. It is so formidable that nothing else in the sea can kill and eat it. A large blue marlin probably deserves the title. If it is healthy, it has only one concern, getting its next meal. It has been reported that on occasion captured big blues have been found to have the remains of smaller marlin in their stomachs. So when it comes to fish, size often matters in determining a true apex predator in the Gulf Stream.

Despite their vulnerabilities, smaller marlin, sailfish and swordfish act like apex predators, which means they are not shy. They should, but they do not fear the anglers in a big charter boat over head. Sails and marlin will charge a trolled bait through the boat’s wake and on rare occasion you can catch one eyeball the boat itself with a look that I would call contempt.

Pride goes before a fall; that willingness to bang the bait with its bill and then circle back to eat it gives the human apex hunters on the charter boat their opportunity to sink a hook into a striking bill fish.

They may not be apex predators but kingfish and mahi-mahi will strike a trolled bait behind a boat. They will hit it hard with no reservation. But they are wary before the charge and must always be aware of larger predators that may be stalking them even as they stalk a ballyhoo skipping behind a sport fishing boat. Big tarpon may be another example. Off Miami, it is a pretty common event to have a bull shark cut a hooked eighty or more pound tarpon in half. The angler can feel in the line the tarpon’s shifting priorities as the hooked fish suddenly realizes that its battle with the angler has made it vulnerable. The line may suddenly slacken, the tarpon may move toward the boat as the bull shark assesses its opportunities.

Fort Lauderdale fishing charters for Snook:

Snook season opens February 1 and will stay open until May 31 for the Florida Atlantic Coast from Miami and Dade County north. The season applies to Okeechobee and the Kissimmee River as well.

In order to keep a snook, it must fall between 28 inches and 32 inches in length– nose to tail. To measure, the fish is laid on its side and the tail compressed so the fish is measured at its fullest length. This is what i widely know as the slot. A fish that falls within this slot made be kept during the open season. A special snook permit is also required, along with a saltwater fishing license.

It is illegal to take a snook with a net. They must be caught on a hook and line.

It is illegal to buy or sell snook. That is why you will not see them on the menu of a Florida Restaurant.

Open season or not unless the angler plans to eat it, most snook are released to breed and fight again. The snook season on the west coast for the area beginning with the Florida Keys and extending north up the coast reopens on March 1.

Snook can be caught year around, but not kept. The should be handled carefully when caught and released in order to give them a better chance to survive.

When cleaning a snook, it is important to skin the fillets because the skin has an unpleasant taste for many.

Snook have been hurt by cold fronts in recent years, particularly on the west coast of Florida. A special effort has been made to rebuild the stock by limiting the season and maintaining the slot.

They can be caught anywhere including fresh water. But, anglers pursuing snook general concentrate on inlets or near inlets. The fast moving water carrying smaller fish are a favorite snook hunting ground.

Search for your fish.

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